The Humanity of the Son of God (Selected Scriptures) | Worship Service

And good morning and welcome to Kootenai Church. We're glad, would you please stand as we begin with a call to worship out of Isaiah chapter 40. In verses three to five it says, "'A voice is calling, prepare the way "'for Yahweh in the wilderness.

"'Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. "'Let every valley be lifted up "'and every mountain and hill be made low. "'And let the rough ground become a plain "'and the rugged terrain a broad valley.

"'Then the glory of Yahweh will be revealed "'and all flesh will see it together "'for the mouth of Yahweh has spoken.'". This morning let's begin our worship service and sing Hark the Herald Angels Sing.

That was on me.

Just two announcements this morning. The first is out in the foyer there is, as promised, a tree with some tags on it. If you would like to bless Sean and Becca Troster this Christmas season, you can take one of those tags and it has on there a gift to buy.

You can buy that gift and wrap it and put the name on it and then bring it back here this next Sunday, a week from today, and it will be delivered to them. And then second is a note for your safety or at least for the safety of anybody who would be foolish enough to do this.

There is a pond, remember, out to the north here, our new stormwater management plan. So all that work that we had done here this summer, that pond is full of water. So don't, kids, run out and jump on top of that pond or run across or sled down the sledding hill, as tempting as those things might be.

Stay away from that because the water in there is very deep, deep enough to drown you. And you don't wanna give that to your parents at Christmas time. Just keep that in your mind, stay away. All right, turn, if you will, please, to Philippians chapter two.

Philippians chapter two. We're gonna read the first 11 verses of Philippians chapter two. Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there's any consolation of love, if there's any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.

Do nothing from selfish ambition, a selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourselves. Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interest of others.

Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of men.

Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

You stand with me as we pray. Let's bow our heads. Our fathers, your people who are called by the name of Christ and wooed by the spirit of Christ and regenerated by the spirit of Christ, it is our joy to confess the lordship of Christ and to admit that he is Lord of heaven and of earth and that he is worthy of our worship and worthy of our adoration and all obedience and trust and confidence.

We thank you, Father, for sending your son into this world to take upon himself a human nature, to be united with this humanity for all of eternity and to die in the stead of sinners, to offer himself up as a vicarious sacrifice on our behalf.

And we thank you, oh divine son, the Lord Jesus Christ, for your grace in coming here to die in our stead, to suffer in our place, to live a righteous life that we may be declared righteous on the merits of your perfection.

And we thank you, spirit of God, for regenerating our hearts, for granting us the gift of repentance, for turning us from our sin, for opening our eyes, quickening us, that we may behold the glory of Christ and see in him a precious savior.

Thank you for this reminder today of the glory that our savior left and the humility that he took on our behalf. And it is our prayer, Lord, that you would work in us the grace and humility to serve others, to live for others, to love others, to be united with others while we trust in the one who did all of those things on our behalf.

We pray these things and your blessing upon our worship and our meditation today upon your word. In the name of Christ, our most worthy Lord.

Amen.

The Servant of Yahweh and the Coming Messiah

42 verses one to three, it says, "'Behold my servant whom I uphold, "'my chosen one in whom my soul is well pleased. "'I have put my spirit upon him. "'He will bring forth justice to the nations. "'He will not cry out or raise his voice "'nor make his voice heard in the street.

"'A crushed reed he will not break, "'and a faintly burning wick he will not extinguish. "'He will bring forth justice in truth.'". We're gonna end our music this morning in saying, oh, come all you unfaithful.

You unfaithful come.

Weak and unstable.

You are not what your God has discovered. You are not what your God. Come with me as we pray.

My father, we come now to your word and we want to see Christ. We want to see his glory, his sacrifice, his humility. And we ask this by the power of your spirit that we would be conformed into his image and that your word would do a work in our hearts, in our souls, that we may not be just hearers of your word, but doers of it and that you would use your word and what your spirit would teach us this morning to shape and mold us so that we may respond by pursuing holiness and that we may respond by pursuing Christlikeness.

Pray that you would make us like your son and that you would be honored and glorified through doing so. And to that end, we pray that you would bless our study and our time here in your word today. For Christ's sake, amen.

On a long road trip this last summer, Deidre and I started listening to an audio book recording of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Now that is a daunting commitment because it is 67 hours of audio because it feels like everything that's ever been written, but it's everything that's ever been written by Arthur Conan Doyle.

And I have enjoyed numerous screen adaptations of some of those stories and I like a good mystery. And I don't know, I think we're 14 or 15 hours into it or something. Obviously it wasn't a road trip long enough.

We'll have to plan another one just to get through this. But the stories of Sherlock Holmes unfold like any typical mystery does. You get all of the details or some of the details in the beginning. And then as the story unfolds and you know how this goes, unless of course you're a Columbo fan, then it's completely reversed.

But you get a few details in the beginning and then as the story unfolds, you have more and more details that are added to it until you get to the end and then you get the reveal. You get the identity or the motive or the full story behind it.

And of course, then you are brought sort of face to face with the great mind of Sherlock Holmes and how he puts the pieces together and deduces all of that to come to the conclusion. And in many ways, for the Old Testament saints who hoped and longed for and anticipated a coming redeemer, it was much like a mystery to them.

They would have had in the very beginning scant details and we looked at some of those last week in Genesis 3, that there would be a champion who would come who in the process of destroying the serpent would himself be bruised.

And this would undo or reverse the curse that this would take care of what had happened in the garden and that this person would be the seed of the woman. There would be something unique about his birth and his lineage that would be unlike any other man.

We saw those, those are really scant details. But then as the Old Testament unfolds and as time passes, we have more and more details that are added to that. We get a lineage and we get a parentage and we get some of the details about this person's life and what he would do and where he would come from.

But it would take hundreds and even thousands of years for those details to unfold. And we looked last week at Genesis 3 .15, the seed of the woman and the promise there. And then moving forward from Genesis 3 .15, we have throughout all of the Old Testament over the unfolding of hundreds of years, centuries, we have pictures and types and symbols and shadows and illustrations and foreshadowing and people who look a lot like that coming Redeemer, but not quite, men like David, very similar in many ways to that coming Redeemer.

And you can look at some of the life and reign of David and say, that sounds a lot like it, but not quite it. Same thing with Aaron and the priesthood and Moses and others, the men who look a lot like the promises, but weren't quite the promises.

And over the course of those hundreds of years, then we got a priesthood and a kingdom and a religious law with sacrifices and feasts and all of these pictures that seemed like they longed for some fulfillment.

They were kind of like that, but not quite like that. And over the course of all of that time, we also got 39 books of inspired scripture that interpreted all of those things, the feasts and the festivals and the sacrifices and the priesthood and the law.

You had commentary after commentary explaining these things, and you have the revelation of this coming Messiah inside of, and this is magnificent, inside of the very commentary that is explaining what it is that we should be looking for.

Prophecies and predictions that are woven into this historical narrative with all kinds of other genre as well. It's quite amazing how all of that is all woven together throughout the Old Testament. So then you get to the end of the Old Testament and you're kind of longing for this fulfillment.

When is this going to happen? And then when you look back, you realize that was 4 ,000 years ago that was first mentioned. 4 ,000 years of human history have passed with all of these things, these details being added, and they're kind of like puzzle pieces to a puzzle.

You get individual pieces here and there. Some of them are clearer than others. Some of them obviously go together. Some of them, you're not quite sure exactly how they go together. And even at the end of the Old Testament, with all of the pieces on the table that God had chosen to reveal, even then looking at all of those pieces, you would be stupefied to figure out how some of them fit together.

For instance, how is it possible that this seed of the woman would be bruised and yet die? How would he be bruised and the bruise doesn't seem to kill him, Genesis 3, and yet he dies, Isaiah 53. And how does this one who dies, how does he then reign and rule over an eternal kingdom forever?

How can he rule as king if he dies? That wouldn't make sense. Now, you and I, from our vantage point, we're like the person who is an expert in Arthur Conan Doyle's writings and the adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

And we can listen to the stories in almost any order. And we can go back and read some of the stories and listen to parts of the story. We know how it unfolds at the end because we know the big reveal at the end.

We know how it all unfolds. We know how it all is revealed at the end. So we can go back and look at the individual pieces and say, oh, yes, well, the bruising obviously is a reference to the death, but the death is not going to be a death that would destroy him forever and annihilate him because he would rise again.

And because of his resurrection, the one who died, which is really only like a bruising since he comes back three days later, can then rule and reign over this eternal kingdom forever. Now we see how all of the pieces fit together.

But Old Testament saints, they for thousands of years, just long to see how God would fulfill those promises and how all of these details would come together. We're gonna focus today and next week on promises and prophecies that reveal the nature of this Redeemer.

We've been going, well, last week, I guess was our first week. And this week, we're continuing in this series of looking at Old Testament promises and details of the coming Messiah. And our Sundays here are really in preparation for Christmas as we reflect upon the incarnation of our Lord.

And we could, going into the Old Testament, we could go any number of hundreds of different directions because we have so many puzzle pieces. So we can look on any one of them or any combination of them and go in different directions.

Like we could talk about the place of his birth or the prophecies of his birth or his life or his miracles or prophecies regarding his disciples and then being betrayed and his crucifixion and ultimately his resurrection and his ascension and his return to the kingdom and the establishment of the kingdom and what that kingdom will look like and how it's tied in with everything else.

We could go a myriad of different directions, but instead, I've chosen to focus today and next week on two different types of prophecies or predictions. Today, those that demonstrate the humanity of the coming Redeemer, and then next week, those that demonstrate the deity of the coming Redeemer.

So the title for today's sermon is The Humanity of the Son of God. Next week, The Deity of the Son of David.

See what I did there?

The humanity of the Son of... That's one of the most brilliant series of titles I've ever come up with. And it's only two in a row. I couldn't do three in a row, but I thought that was good. Today, The Humanity of the Son of God.

Now, why the humanity? Isn't that a given? I mean, we are actually talking about the birth from a virgin, the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. He had a name. He had an adopted earthly father. He had a human mother, a real, literal, physical birth into this realm.

We know that he lived for 30 years. He had friends. He had a human body. Why would we focus upon the birth or upon the humanity of Christ? A couple of different reasons. First, this may strike you as surprising or shocking, but there have been heresies that have cropped up in the history of the Christian church that denied the humanity of the Lord Jesus.

They denied the humanity of Christ. Now, there are heresies that denied the deity of Christ as well, but there are heresies that deny the full and the full humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we wanna make sure that as we talk about who it is that was born and what he has done, that we're given proper attention, proper consideration to the nature and the reality of his humanity.

Second, without the humanity of Jesus, salvation is impossible, and it is important to understand this. Without the humanity of Jesus, if you do not affirm a fully human person in the Lord Jesus Christ with a fully human nature, not sinful nature, but fully human nature, then salvation is impossible.

The fall, which we looked at last week, ruined the first Adam and all who came from him and brought a curse upon creation. And Adam acted in the garden as our representative, which is why his fall in the garden is imputed to us.

This is Romans chapter five. And so we are all therefore under Adam and we die because of his act of disobedience. Now, if you think that that is unjust and unfair, that somebody that you've never met, never talked to acted as your representative in the garden, then you have to be consistent and say that it's unfair that somebody who have never met and never encountered acts as your representative on the cross.

This is the way that God has saved us. We have a representative in the garden, and if you think you would have done better than Adam, I have news for you, you would have done no better than Adam. Given all of the details on the ground, you would have fallen and sinned against God in the exact same way that Adam does, which is why he could act as your representative because you would have done the same thing.

If you were Adam in the garden, we would all be blaming you today for what you did to this perfect creation. Second, we needed a man to act on our behalf because that first Adam acted on our behalf. We needed a man who would act on our behalf, who would then be the head of a new humanity, one who could represent us before God as fully man.

Just as Adam represented us in the garden, we needed one to represent us to do what we could not do by virtue of our fallenness and our inabilities, one to do that and act as our representative. And he had to be fully man.

It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins, and it was impossible for the righteous life of a goat or a sheep or an ox to be credited to your account. I needed somebody who could fulfill all of the demands of God's law on my behalf so that when I stand in the presence of God, he can look at me, Jim Osman, who has never been able to keep any of his law and say that in the accounting books of God, that law is completely fulfilled.

Not because I have kept it, but because somebody else has kept it in my place. And his perfect obedience and his righteous life is credited to my account like a bank transaction. And all of my sin is credited to his account like a bank transaction.

So he gets our sin, we get his righteousness, and we could not get his righteousness if he was not a perfect man who fulfilled all of the demands of God's law. Charles Hodge, in his book, in his three volume series called Systematic Theology, writes this, God, as God, the eternal Logos, could neither be nor do what our necessities demand.

Much less could any mere man, however wise, holy, or benevolent, meet the wants of our souls. It is only a savior who is both God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever who is all we need and all we can desire.

As God, he is ever present, almighty, and infinite in all his resources to save and bless. And as man, or being also a man, he can be touched with a sense of our infirmities, was tempted as we are, was subject to the law which we violated, and endured the penalty which we incurred.

See, he represents us. He acts on our behalf. In everything he did, it is entirely appropriate to say that the Lord Jesus Christ died as my substitute. But that is only half of what you need for salvation.

I need one to live as my substitute, to pray and to obey and to be perfect as my substitute. Because I have not only a sin problem that needs to be washed away, I have a righteousness deficit that is like a deep, dark, black hole that needs to be filled to glory's level.

I lack righteousness and I have a heaping helping of sin. The sin has to be taken away and the righteousness issue has to be solved. Therefore, I need one who can not only die in my place, but one who can live in my place.

And the third reason we're studying the humanity of Christ is because it's just, to me, simply amazing. It wouldn't shock us if God shows up in his creation as God. That's not a shocking thing. God shows up as God, in glory, in splendor, in majesty, with bright lights and angels surrounding him.

If God were to show up and enter his creation as God, that would not shock us at all. That's actually what we would expect. We would expect that very thing. But if God shows up and enters his creation, taking the form of a servant and coming in the likeness of men, and he lays aside the prerogatives of his deity and leaves heaven with the worship of angels and the worship of saints, and he takes upon himself human flesh and all of the weaknesses, not sinful proclivities, but all of the weaknesses of human flesh, so that he might know that frailty and then unites himself with that redeemed humanity by assuming that nature, and then lives as a creature in his creation to come not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many, and then to die at the hands of that rebellious creation, all while rendering perfect obedience as their representative, and to serve that creation by living and dying at the hands of the rebels in that creation, that is magnificent.

That is glorious. For God to enter his creation as God, that's what we'd expect. For God to take upon himself humanity and to live with our weaknesses, to know them, to know what it is to be hungry and thirsty and tired and betrayed and abandoned and lonely and unfulfilled, to know what those are, to deal with all of the limitations of humanity that do not involve sin, and to be tempted in every way as you and I are, and yet to render in this creation, which has already fallen, an obedience that Adam in an unfallen creation did not render, that is magnificent.

That is what makes him such a stunning savior. So let's give our attention to the fact of his humanity as promised in the Old Testament, and we're gonna look today at three different indications of his humanity, the promised Messiah's humanity.

We're gonna look at his lineage, his servant suffering, and then his reign, his lineage, his suffering, and his reign. And I promised you last week, we were gonna look at a number of different passages.

We're gonna do that today, starting with Genesis chapter 12. So turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 12. We're gonna begin with the lineage of the Messiah. It's important to begin with the lineage because before anybody can claim to be the Messiah, the son of David, he has to be able to trace his lineage back through a certain family tree, certain family line.

This is why, by the way, Matthew and Luke both give us genealogies of Jesus. Those are there in order for them to demonstrate the messianic credentials of this one whom they are saying is the Messiah.

Anybody could step onto the Messian and say, oh, so-and-so, he's the Messiah, but unless you could trace his lineage back through a certain family line, all the way back, in Luke's case, to creation itself, to Eve, and in Matthew's case, all the way back through to David, unless you could trace that back, you could have no credible claim to be the Messiah.

So Genesis chapter 12. Now, we looked last week at chapter three, and keep in mind that as we fast forward now nine chapters in the book of Genesis, we're fast-forwarding through about 2 ,000 years of human history.

So this is after the flood, when all of humanity has been wiped out, save Noah and his three sons and their wives. So eight people on board the ark, and Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And you might then be able to say, okay, well, after the flood, obviously we have narrowed down the lineage through which this Messiah would come.

It has to come all the way back through Noah. That's true, but Noah has three sons, and as you might expect, they had lots of children, and began to fill the earth back relatively quickly. But in Genesis chapter 12, actually at the end of chapter 11, we get the lineage from Noah through Shem, and all the way down to Abraham.

Genesis chapter 12, one through three, and we looked at some of these passages in connection with tracing the promises of land and seed, et cetera, in the book of Hebrews. Chapter 12, now we get an indication that God has chosen one man through whom to bring this promised seed of the woman.

Verse one, now the Lord said to Abraham, go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father's house to the land which I will show you, and I will make you a great nation. And I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing, and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

So now you see some details added to the promise that we looked at last week in chapter three. Now we see the details. This is going to come, obviously, from Eve through Noah, through Shem, and now Abraham.

Abraham is chosen out of all of the millions of people who would have existed on the earth in those days. Abraham himself is chosen, and now this promise of a great blessing is narrowed down to Abraham's line.

Abraham is chosen to be the father of a nation. And later on, we would read that Abraham would become the father of kings, and that's a significant addition to the promises to Abraham. But Abraham ended up having two sons, one the son of a bondwoman and one the son of a free woman.

Abraham tried to fulfill the promises in himself, by himself, because his wife was barren at the time, by taking Sarah's handmaid and having a child with her, siring a child through her, and that was Ishmael.

Ishmael was Abraham's firstborn, but he was not the one through whom the Messiah would come. So now even today you have the descents of Ishmael, which is a lot of the Arab races and nations, and you have the descendants of Isaac.

Let me get a bunch of names I gotta keep straight here. Isaac, which is the Jewish descendants. And so it's not going to be this other half of humanity through Abraham, the Ishmaelites, it's going to come through Isaac, Abraham's son, Isaac.

And that's reiterated in Genesis 17, verse 19. God said, no, Sarah, your wife will bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac, and I will establish my covenant, that one that we just read in Genesis chapter 12, I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant and for his descendants after him.

Now, Ishmael, God would bless, but Isaac would be the one through whom this promise would continue and be given. Isaac ended up taking Rebekah, and she was found pregnant with two sons. So now we have to say, okay, so which one of these sons is it going to come to?

But God chose Jacob over Esau, even though Esau was the firstborn. Genesis 25, verse 23, and you can continue to follow along if you want, because we're not going back to Genesis 12, we left that in the dust.

Genesis 25, verse 23, the Lord said to her, two nations are in your womb, and two peoples will be separated from your body, and one people shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger.

And of course, we saw in Hebrews how that promise was fulfilled through the deception and sin of almost every person in that family. This promise is later confirmed when God changes his name to Israel.

Genesis 35, verse 11, God also said to him, "'I am God Almighty, be fruitful and multiply. "'A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, "'and kings shall come forth from you. "'The land which I gave to Abraham and Isaac, "'I will give to you, "'and I will give the land to your descendants after you.'".

So from Eve through Noah to Shem to Abraham to Isaac to Jacob, but then Jacob has 12 sons. We gotta narrow it down even further now, don't we? And God does that very thing later on at the end of the book of Genesis.

And by the way, the author of Genesis is tracing this theme all the way through it. He's not just telling a story. Oh yeah, and this happened, let me scratch my head, oh yeah, and this happened, oh, you're never gonna believe this, this was crazy, this happened as well.

That's not how the biblical authors wrote. Moses is tracing what started in Genesis 3 all the way through the book of Genesis, and more and more details. Oh, it's gonna be a nation, it's gonna be Abraham's descendants, not just Abraham's descendants, but Isaac particularly, not just Isaac, but Jacob.

And then what happens to that family ends up going down to Egypt and they're taken out of the land, and it's the end of the book of Genesis that now we're given yet another detail, Genesis chapter 49, Genesis chapter 49.

This is Jacob in Egypt with his 12 sons gathered around his deathbed, and he begins to bless them, and I want you to look particularly at the blessing that is given to the tribe of Judah in verse 8. Now this verses 8 to 12 is the blessing that is given to Judah and to his descendants, and there are details here regarding his strength and his prosperity and other things regarding his character, but I don't want you to notice, focus in on that so much as verse 10.

Look at what he has promised. "'The scepter shall not depart from Judah, "'nor the ruler's staff from between his feet "'until Shiloh comes, and to him "'shall be the obedience of the people.'". Now Judah is promised strength and preeminence within the nation and among Jacob's sons, and the promise here that was given to Abraham, kings shall come forth from you, that promise is now reiterated in verse 10.

You notice the reference to the scepter, the scepter shall not depart from Judah. Notice the reference to the ruler's staff from between his feet until Shiloh, and that word is kind of transliterated there, the word Shiloh means the one whose it is or the one to whom it belongs.

That's what that word means. So it is a name or a title, but it also, that title means the one to whom it belongs. Now notice again, let's insert that in verse 10. "'The scepter shall not depart from Judah, "'nor the ruler's staff from between his feet "'until the one to whom it belongs.'".

To whom what belongs? The staff, the scepter. There's one coming, Judah is told, from his tribe to whom the right to rule will be given, and he is the one to whom it belongs. It's his right, it's his rule, it's his authority, and that would come from Judah.

And to him shall be the obedience of all the peoples. So now you can see how this blessing that was promised to Abraham, the blessing to all the nations now is going to come through Isaac and then to Jacob and then through particularly one of Jacob's sons, Judah.

He will be the one through whom this one comes, Shiloh, the one to whom the scepter, the ruler's staff belongs, and to him it shall be given. And to him, all of the obedience of the peoples will be rendered.

All people will confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father and admit that and bow the knee. Then we have to fast forward another 500 years to David. And this is the last one I want you to look at.

Well, you don't have to look, I'm gonna read it to you. 2 Samuel 7, David is a descendant to the tribe of Judah. Verse 12, 2 Samuel 7, verse 12. When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, there's a promise that God is giving to David.

I will raise up your descendant after you who will come forth from you and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him and he will be a son to me when he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men and the strokes of the sons of men, but my loving kindness shall not depart from him as I took it away from Saul whom I removed from before you.

Your house and your kingdom shall endure before me forever. Your throne shall be established. Now, some of that promise that God gives to David in that passage is spoken about and fulfilled by specifically Solomon.

But some of that promise is not fulfilled by Solomon. For instance, Solomon is not going to take the throne.

And rule forever.

Solomon is dead. And he has been for a number of years now. So some of this is fulfilled by Solomon. It's true, when he sins, he would be corrected. But some of this is fulfilled by one who would come through David, through Solomon's line, who would ultimately fulfill the entire Davidic covenant.

All of the promises to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and now to David. There is coming a king now from David's line. So we go from Abraham, which of the two, to Isaac, which of the two, to Jacob, which of the 12, to Judah.

Of all of Judah's descendants, which one to whom would the Messiah come? It would be through David's line. And not specifically just David, but David and Solomon, because David had many sons. So now we're starting to fill in.

Do you see how we're putting pieces of the puzzle together as to who this one would be who would rule the nations? Now we're starting to get a more complete picture. So that is his lineage. He is obviously a man.

We see this in his lineage. He is the promised son of David. Now notice second, the suffering service of the Messiah demonstrates his humanity. And for this, I would like you to turn over to Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 42.

You say, this sounds familiar, Isaiah 42. It's because during the worship, Josh read this passage that I had planned to read to you, but we'll read it again. Isaiah 42. And we turn forward to Isaiah 42.

We're fast forwarding roughly, and these are all rough numbers, but around 300 more years. We come now forward 2 ,800 years from the time of Abraham. Isaiah is writing before the fall of the Southern kingdom, the kingdom of Judah, named after obviously Judah.

He's writing right before the fall of the Southern kingdom of Judah. And Isaiah is contrasting. He's contrasting two things. The disobedience of the nation of Israel that resulted in the fall of that kingdom and the destruction of the Davidic monarchy for that time, the end of that, the destruction of that kingdom.